


Arachnophobia

by babybutterbeans



Category: Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age II
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-05
Updated: 2015-07-05
Packaged: 2018-04-07 18:47:49
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,476
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4274076
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/babybutterbeans/pseuds/babybutterbeans
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>(based on an AU prompt on tumblr)</p>
<p>Garrett Hawke definitely isn't afraid of spiders. Well, maybe just this one in particular.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Arachnophobia

**Author's Note:**

> As the title and description imply, this fic contains spiders. Maybe you shouldn't read it if spiders bother you. 
> 
> just a quick thing I wrote at 1 AM. Well, it's almost 4 AM now so it was written over about 3 hours, very late at night. so if you see any mistakes (which im sure you will), i'm sorry.

_Put the pan in the oven, set the timer for 15 minutes. Shut the oven door._

                _Perfect_ , Hawke thinks to himself _, I’m practically a chef. Well, it’s a frozen pizza, but I haven’t messed up so far…_

“Alright, fifteen minutes,” he mutters out loud, rubbing his hands together and looking around his apartment, “I’ve got fifteen minutes to kill.”

                He briefly considers cleaning up around the house, but quickly throws that idea into a metaphorical garbage can. He’s just going to watch TV.

                He settles onto his raggedy old couch and turns on some medical soap opera. He didn’t necessarily _want_ to watch this show, but flipping through the channels to find something was much more effort than he wanted to put into watching television.

                After a couple of minutes, just as he’s starting to really get into the show _(he definitely was not tearing up when the main character’s love interest broke up with her)_ , he spotted something move on his coffee table. Nothing big, just a brief, tiny flicker of something on the table in front of him. He immediately looked at the table, practically glaring in suspicion.

                “What the fuck,” he whispered, addressing the table. He didn’t see anything out of the ordinary, but he was sure he saw something. After an intense 30 second staring contest with the coffee table, he decided that it must’ve been his imagination.

                He looked back up at the TV, immersing himself in the soap opera once again, but not a minute later, he saw it again.

                Instead of just ignoring it again, he decides to find the source.

                _It has to just be a fly or something_ , he sighs. Carefully, he begins picking up some of the various items that’ve accumulated on his table in the last few days, checking for any sign of whatever he saw. He had nearly cleaned off the table entirely when he saw it.

                If anyone had asked, Garrett would’ve sworn that the spider was nearly the size of his palm, when in reality, it was only slightly bigger than a quarter. But that didn’t horrify him any less.

                His blood ran cold, and his heart started to race.

                “Oh shit,” he whispers.

                It wasn’t _doing_ anything, just sitting there, minding its own business, but of course Garrett Hawke would take that as a personal offense.

                Without taking his eyes off the spider, he carefully reaches behind him to grab one of the magazines he’d tossed from the table to the couch. Slowly, he moves into a perfect spider-smacking position. Before he could do anything, the spider moved, and he instinctively let out an embarrassingly loud screech. Panicking, he scrambles over the couch to position himself behind it, in case it can _jump_.

                But it doesn’t jump. Instead, it scurries over to the edge of the table, and makes its way down to the floor on a little web. Hawke, on the other hand, felt like he was going to be sick. He had to destroy this thing. He slowly tip-toes around the couch to get a better angle for seeing the spider, and bravely grabs one of his shoes from next to the front door. He practically glares at the spider as he steps carefully toward it, feeling determined.

                The spider suddenly ran a few inches toward him, and he couldn’t stop himself from bolting out the front door of his apartment. He was terrified, and he needed to get out of that apartment to come up with a plan of attack. As he runs out the door, however, he crashes directly into someone standing right outside his door.            

                _What the hell_ , he thinks as he tries to quickly regain his composure. He looks up and, to his horror, immediately recognizes the man, with his blond hair tied up carelessly, his beautiful golden eyes wide in confusion. _Maker, why did it have to be him?_ It was Anders, the man who lived across from him. Hawke _rarely_ saw him, since he seemed to work very late nights, but he saw him every now and then, looking exhausted as he reached his apartment as Hawke was leaving for an early shift at work. But no matter how tired he looked, Anders always managed to give him a smile and a polite “good morning” that made Hawke feel giddy for the rest of the day.

                “Are you alright?” Anders asks, reaching out to steady Hawke. “I was just leaving and I heard a scream.” Hawke makes the mistake of direct eye contact and feels his face turn red in embarrassment.

                “Oh, you heard that?” He says nervously, trying to appear cool and casual. “It was nothing, everything’s fine,” he says a little too quickly.

                Anders just stares at him.

                “Why did you scream, then?”

                Hawke stares back.

                “I saw a spider,” he says without thinking, and immediately wants to slap himself. He braces himself for angry words, but was surprised when Anders starts to laugh.

                “You _screamed_ because of a _spider_?” He says, his voice filled with amusement. “Is that why you ran out here so quickly?”

                “I panicked, alright?” He tries to say seriously, but Anders’ laughter left him feeling a bit giggly as well. “I don’t know anything about spiders. What if it’s poisonous or something? It could’ve killed me!”

                “Well then, I suppose it’s a good thing that your neighbor is a doctor,” he says, trying to fight off laughter.

                “Does being a doctor make you immune to fear of being bitten by spiders? Because I could really use some help getting rid of this thing.” _Smooth, Garrett, very smooth._

                “May I?” Anders asks, gesturing into Hawke’s apartment.

                “Yes, of course!” Hawke says enthusiastically, stepping aside to let Anders in.

                “Where is this extremely deadly spider, then?”

                “Uh, it was just right here in front of the couch last I saw.” They walked over together and sure enough, the spider was still there. Anders takes one look at it and bursts into a fit of giggles again.

                “ _This_ is what scared you? This is _tiny_!” He kneels down to take a closer look. “Do you have a glass or something? I’ll put it out one of your windows.” As Hawke scrambles to find a glass, Anders continues observing the spider.

                “You should’ve seen the spiders we had back home. Many of them would get to be the size of your hand, and you’d find them _everywhere_.”

                “Home?” Hawke asks, handing Anders a glass. “Where’s that? Just so I can be sure to never go there, of course. If I saw a spider that big, I’d cry.”    

                “The Anderfels,” he says softly, carefully trapping the spider underneath the glass and covering the bottom with a scrap of paper from Hawke’s coffee table. Hawke mentally slaps himself. _Of course he’s from the Anderfels. “Anders” must just be a nickname._

                “That sounds horrifying, honestly,” Hawke says with a laugh.

                "Trust me, you get used to it." Anders carefully took the cup over to the closest window. Garrett quickly rushed over to open it for him, staying as far away from the spider as possible, and Anders shook the cup outside the widow, letting the spider fall into the grass underneath it.

                “There you go, it’s gone.” He smiled triumphantly. He handed the glass back to Hawke, who took it hesitantly, as if it’d been dangerously contaminated by the spider.

                “You, doctor, are a hero.” Hawke grinned back at him. Suddenly, he remembered what Anders had said earlier about how he had been leaving his apartment when he heard him scream. “Sorry, you said you were going somewhere? I didn’t just make you late for an appointment or something, did I?”

                “No, I was just going out to grab dinner,” Anders said, clearly amused. As if on cue, the timer on Hawke’s oven beeped. “What are you cooking? It smells amazing.”

                “I’ll show you,” Hawke said with a smile, and gestured for Anders to follow him into the kitchen.

                Triumphantly, he pulled the pan out of the oven and set it carefully on the counter.

                “Ta-da! It’s beautiful, isn’t it?”

                “It really is,” Anders said quietly as they both stared at it in awe.

                “You know,” Hawke began, “this is a really big pizza. I probably couldn’t eat this entire thing by myself.” He looked at Anders, hoping he would understand. Anders stared at him with a look of amusement and suspicion.

                “Are you inviting me to dinner, Mr. Hawke?”

                “Absolutely.” Hawke grinned. “Would you like to have dinner with me?”

                “I think that would be lovely,” Anders said happily.

 

                Their evening together ended after dinner and a heavy makeout session on Hawke’s couch, and plans for dinner together again tomorrow, and Hawke realized that for the first (and hopefully last) time in his life, he felt vaguely grateful toward that little spider.

**Author's Note:**

> based on this post here: http://awful-aus.tumblr.com/post/119529365222/submitted-au-213
> 
> I'm dying to write some F!Hawke/Merrill modern au stuff, so if anyone comes across a prompt that would work with those two, let me know so i can write it. c: otherwise, i saw a prompt that i'd like to use for a F!Hawke/Isabela thing, maybe, but i'm prioritizing anything related to Merrill, because i love her. well obviously i love isabela too, but... merrill...


End file.
